Don’t go too fast swearing you’ll be a grave when you are told a secret. According to several scientific studies, although we are not all equal when it comes to secrecy, we could not keep it anyway. Too heavy, too heavy, our body betrays us the first, we learn on the Huffington Post.
Why is this difficult?
Because it disturbs, obviously. American researchers were interested in 2013 in the bodies of people hiding a secret. They published their findings in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Subjects were required to conceal their sexual orientation during a short interview and were not required to utter specific words while performing various tasks. The researchers then found that the participants had hard to concentrate, that they were more easily aggressive and that they exhibited less physical endurance. Our body would end up betraying us …
Because secrets occupy too much of our brain and ask our consciousness to focus on them. “When an individual talks to another knowing full well that there are things he must keep to himself, his thoughts are contaminated with secret information that should be kept out of the way. ‘tries not to think of something, the more you have it in mind “explains psychiatrist Jean-Paul Mialet, on the Atlantico site, commenting on the results of a 2007 study published in The American Journal of Psychology.
Keeping a big secret can be risky
Depression, loneliness, remorse, nausea, back pain, relationship problems, our body is put to the test. Keeping a big secret can be risky. In 2009, a study looked at 300 teens and their relationship to secrets. The findings of Professor Tom Frijins, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development, are worrying: “The constant control of our feelings and our thoughts is exhausting for the body and for the spirit”. Six months after this observation, the adolescents were much better if they had confided, the condition of others had worsened.
In 1989, James Pennebraker, a psychologist at the University of Texas interviewed 33 concentration camp survivors, about memories they had never shared, while their heart rate was monitored. Fourteen months later, the researcher resumed contact with the survivors for a health check. The participants were all in better physical condition.
But research also points out that we are not all equal when it comes to secrets. When some people put an end to the confidence out of fatigue or remorse, others will live with it and even end up hiding it from themselves.
